


Afternoon Break

by cyus (cruentum)



Series: Sharing Spaces (Pizza Mouth verse) [3]
Category: Torchwood
Genre: Domestic, M/M
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2012-03-09
Updated: 2012-03-09
Packaged: 2017-11-01 16:50:49
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,234
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/359109
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/cruentum/pseuds/cyus
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Jack and Ianto have a few hours to themselves during an afternoon in Cardiff.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Afternoon Break

**Author's Note:**

> originally posted on LJ 12/08/09

Ianto kicks the ball to Jack, lifts his hand in _what now?_ when the ball bounces awkwardly off Jack's ankle and disappears in the bushes to the neighbours. 

"You haven't really kicked a ball before, have you?" Ianto squints against the sun at Jack.

Jack stands with his arms crossed, the coat lying in a heap to the side, and he looks almost naked like that. It's a Saturday afternoon, and Torchwood downtime coincides with a Cardiff day that allows the sun a peek into ordinary lives. 

Ianto shakes his head and jogs to the side of the small back garden to fetch the ball.

"Cricket," Jack replies.

Ianto stops in mid-movement, turns slowly. The grass, wet from an early morning shower, squeaks under his shoes. "Cricket," he intones carefully.

"Cricket," Jack replies with a firm nod. 

"Shit." Ianto stares at Jack, then laughs. "Your posh arse would have never made it to my mum's Sunday tea." He ducks under the bushes, angles his foot for the ball and regrets the flippant mention because it brings back too much too fast. He finds the ball and pushes it free from the undergrowth.

"Not posh," Jack says.

Ianto grins and lazily kicks the ball a few feet. "Wearing whites and never getting dirty," he says, cheap imitation of a posh accent with Welsh r's ruining the picture.

Jack rolls his eyes, nods at the ball. "Are we playing or what?"

Ianto sizes him up and kicks the ball. Jack stretches for it, boot slipping on the grass and lands flat on his arse. He looks up at Ianto with a faint flicker of surprise and _how did that happen then_.

Ianto strolls over, crouches. "What did you do in the 60s? Watch polo?"

Jack shrugs, grimaces at the wetness of the grass, lifts his grass-stained hands up to shove at Ianto's face. "For example."

"Kissed all the pretty girls in too-big hats?"

Jack rolls his eyes. "Not exactly the time to rough up the boys with too many beers and high from the stadium." Jack stands, brushes along his wet trousers and walks away from Ianto to fetch the ball.

"Thought you'd like the uniforms. Never done a football player? Or rugby? Never done a rugby player?"

Jack kicks the ball towards Ianto, intends to, anyway. Ianto ducks to the side when it nearly takes off his head. "Sorry." Jack laughs. He shrugs and waits for Ianto to fetch the ball again, watches him do a trick or two. "I'd do you in shorts," he says.

Ianto laughs and loses concentration and the ball both. He kicks the ball to Jack, and Jack kicks it back easily. "Don't think I have them anymore." He passes the ball back to Jack. "What's it like, what was it like, Cardiff, in the 60s?"

Jack misses the ball and jogs for it, passes it back and forth between his feet as he strolls closer again. "Grey. Drunken." He shrugs. "It's better today. Would I have really-" Jack stops with the ball, "your mum, wouldn't-"

Ianto looks at the grass, shakes his head. "Doesn't matter. Pass it, yeah?" He nods at the ball.

Jack passes the ball to Ianto, shrugs. "Okay."

Ianto rolls his foot over the ball, kicks it with the outside to the right, with the inside back to the left.

"Your Dad?"

"Leave it, Jack." A cloud pushes over the sun, and Ianto looks up to the sky where Cardiff becomes more like Cardiff again. "Looks like rain," he says, and nods at their cups of coffee on the steps down from the house to the garden.

"Your Da-" The glare from Ianto shuts Jack up. Jack shrugs, then grins. "Guess what I found?"

Ianto looks up, eyes narrowed as he tries not to think about his Da or what he would have said about this, any of this, really. "When." The word loses its question mark on the way past his lips.

"You do sleep you know."

"Shit." Ianto rests his foot on the ball. 

"Well first there were the CDs, all neat and-"

"You didn't."

"-but then, behind the CDs, see, in-"

"You didn't." Ianto shakes his head.

Jack walks over to his coat and reaches into one of the pockets, pulls out a tape. He jiggles it, plastic against plastic. 

Ianto stares at him, the football, he could certainly kick it out of his-, then he leaves the ball and walks over to Jack, more than determined, and reaches for the tape, only to have Jack snatch it out of the way. 

"Nuh-uh," Jack says, laughing, and holds the tape above his head.

The writing on the case is fairly unmistakable. Ianto takes a deep breath, then pulls Jack closer by the braces and goes up on his tiptoes, grabbing for it. 

Jack, laughing, holds it out of the way, jiggles it again for the sound. "Do you still know the words-"

"Jack."

"Do you-"

"I was 12."

"Oh but you must have been so-" 

Ianto shakes his head and pushes at Jack's chest, then turns and walks back to the steps and the cup of coffee, desperate for it. "You're never staying over again!" he says over his shoulder, then bends down for his cup, turns with it as he is taking a sip, watching triumphant Jack with the tape in his hand. "That's _worse_ than baby photos."

"Shouldn't leave it lying around," Jack says and pushes the tape into his pocket. "Wait until I show it to Gwen."

Ianto groans. "It wasn't lying around, it was in a drawer. Normal people don't go through their-" he breaks off, shrugs, "normal people don't go through other people's stuff."

"Are you calling me not normal?" Jack picks up his coat and strolls towards Ianto, kicking the ball over, only to narrowly miss his own coffee cup. It earns him a glare from Ianto. "Oops."

"Certainly not normal." 

Jack steps up to Ianto and takes his coffee cup from him to take a sip, pulls a face.

"Mine isn't poisoned with sugar," Ianto says dryly, watches Jack take a second sip despite himself. 

Jack pushes the cup back into Ianto's hand and steps closer, slips his hand under Ianto's shirt, fingertips moving slowly along the waistband of Ianto's trousers before he settles his hand on Ianto's hip and leans forward to kiss him.

Chaste really, and Ianto smiles into the kiss as he inches his left hand forward, going for Jack's pocket with the tape, as his wrist is caught in one of Jack's paws. Ianto opens his eyes to a grinning Jack.

"Nice try," Jack says and presses a kiss to Ianto's nose. "But Gwen _has_ to hear this."

"Any chance of a photo of you in posh cricket whites somewhere?" Ianto bends to collect Jack's cup off the step and walks into the house. "Get the ball, yeah?"

"You'd have to go through my drawers. Maybe you'll get lucky." 

Ianto feels that wink in the sound waves and rolls his eyes. "I'll just invite Gwen for a bit of footie next time. Unlike you she actually knows how to play."

"She's Welsh," Jack says, affronted. "Of course she-"

Ianto turns, grins broadly. "Exactly." He dumps the cups in the sink. "Back to work then? I'm driving." 

Jack sighs. "Just when I was getting the hang of that ball."

Ianto rolls his eyes.


End file.
